Saturday, March 24, 2012

Glenn Beck proved too extreme for even Fox News. Since his departure from Fox, onhis website and and his web televisions broadcast Beck always seeks to achieve a a new all-time low in human decency. But this week, he demonstrated why even the Apartheid News Network shitcanned him.

The recent shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American, by a much larger adult male acting as a so-called “neighborhood watch” captain horrified decent people. Beck, however, saw Martin’s tragic death (which has provoked a Justice Department investigation) as just one more opportunity to dehumanize and belittle people of color.

Racist demagogue Glenn Beck: David Duke without the sheets or even the honesty. (Photo from

Beck now operates a “news” website called The Blaze. Mytheos Holt, an associate editor at The Blaze launched into an attack on the late teenager, strongly implying (without evidence) that Martin was a thief or had even committed a sexual offense.

News accounts indicated that Martin had been suspended from Dr. Michael C. Korp Senior High School in Miami for excessive tardiness. With no evidence to back him up, Holt said he had doubts about the stated reason for the 10-day suspension and suggested that sympathetic liberal reporters were covering up something more sinister. Holt then listed all the other reasons a student at Krop could be suspended, including theft, sexual harassment, vandalism or sex offenses.

Holt would not be alone in defaming the late young man. Just as Fox News fans greeted the death of singer Whitney Houston’s death with celebratory glee and racial slurs (see my previous post, “Fox News Fans Unleash The ‘N-Word” Against The Late Whitney Houston” at http://republicanracism.blogspot.com/2012/02/republican-racism-example-19-fox-news.html), so Fox fans applauded the shototing and Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Some made the groundless implication that the black youth had to have been a criminal.

“Good shot, Zimmy, lol,” one fan posted in reaction to a story on Martin’s death at the Fox News site, according to the Huffington Post. “i’m (sic.] just glad Zimmerman didnt [sic.] miss and hit an innocent bystander,” wrote another. Another Fox fan assumed there had to be something incriminating in Martin’s police record, with nothing more to go on than the fact that the youth was black. This Fox poster wrote:

“This is pure B.S I want to see the kids police record even if something is expounged also why was he removed from facebook it says account terminated. Why because his parents are trying to cover his tracks just like if you hit a bus they see Dollar signs. People have dragged data about Zimmerman out where is the kids past. Don’t say he was a good boy prove it. Ask yourself what is more likely to happen any 17 year old kid when you ask a question. A smartass reply I have never and I mean never seen a teenager run unless he did something wrong. I guess no crinimal [sic.] has ever cased a place when they went to a store. It takes me aback the way all these facts are quoted by people who read one story on a issue.” (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/the-blaze-site-founded-by_n_1370843.html).

In case you have been under a rock, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Latino, fatally shot Martin February 26 in Sanford, Fla., near Orlando. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman called 9-1-1 when he spotted Martin, who was visiting his father in a gated neighborhood and had walked to a nearby 7-Eleven to buy Skittles and an Arizona ice tea for his 13-year-old stepbrother.

The victim, Trayvon Martin, on the right and the shooter, George Zimmerman, on the left. (Photo from

Zimmerman told police that he saw “a suspicious person in the area” and began following Martin in his SUV. A dispatcher told Zimmerman to not follow. The dispatcher told Zimmerman that a squad car was being sent to the scene and that police would handle the matter. He clearly ignored these instructions.

What happens after that is murky, but witnesses says they heard a scuffle and cries for help, a cell phone captures the sound of screaming that Martin’s mother has identified as coming from her son, and there was a gunshot. Police subsequently found Zimmerman, with a bloody nose and a minor head wound, armed with a Kel Tek .9 mm handgun and standing over Martin’s body. Martin had already died and had only been carrying the bag of Skittles and the bottle of ice tea.

Zimmerman, described by witnesses as about three inches taller and approximately 100 pounds heavier than the tall but very slender 6-3 140 pound Martin

Trayvon Martin: Guilty of "walking while black." (Photo from http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2012/03/23/who-is-trayvon-martin-asked-my-7-year-old-daughter-i-answered-video/.)

Imagine for a second if a much larger African American man bearing a gun followed an unarmed white teenager carrying nothing but Skittles and ice tea and fatally shot the youth. Do you honestly think that any police department would have let him go simply on his claim of self defense? If this theoretical black suspect had been released, how do you think the folks at the “Black People Scare Us” Fox News network would have reacted to the story, given their ginned-up, phony hysteria over rappers like Common performing at the White House, or ACORN, or the miniscule “New Black Panther Party?” (See my previous blog post at http://republicanracism.blogspot.com/2012/02/republican-racism-example-17-fox-news.html).

What happened immediately after Trayvon’s killing is every bit as disgusting as the police malfeasance at the crime scene. Martin was carrying a cell phone, which police found. When he didn’t return home, his loved ones began calling him. Police apparently didn’t pick up the phone or call any of the numbers stored on it. Martin was left for three days as a “John Doe,” in storage at the local morgue for three days while his panicked family tried to find out what happened. This unfolded in spite of the fact that Martin’s mother reported him as missing.

The world has found out a lot about George Zimmerman since the shooting. Mytheos Holt, the “crack investigative journalist” at Beck’s website, implied without evidence that Martin might be a criminal. The clod missed the fact that Zimmerman has an arrest record. As the Orlando Sentinel reports:

“In 2005, George Zimmerman was twice accused of either criminal misconduct or violence.

That July, Zimmerman — 21 at the time — was at a bar near the University of Central Florida when a friend was arrested by state alcohol agents on suspicion of serving underage drinkers, according to an arrest report.

Zimmerman was talking with his friend, became profane and pushed an agent who tried to escort him away, the report said. Authorities said he was arrested after a short struggle.

Charged with resisting arrest without violence, he avoided conviction by entering a pretrial-diversion program, something common for first-time offenders.

A month later, court records show, a woman filed a petition for an injunction against Zimmerman, citing domestic violence. It's unclear what led to the petition, but Zimmerman responded by filing a petition of his own the following day.

Records show injunctions were later issued in both cases. Reached by email, the woman would not comment on her past with Zimmerman or his current situation.

[In 2008] . . . he resurfaced in court documents as a credit-card company pursued him for unpaid debts.

Capital One accused Zimmerman of failing to pay more than $1,000. He settled with the company for $2,135.82, records show, to cover his debts with interest, as well as attorney and court costs. However, the credit-card company soon reported that Zimmerman wasn't making the payments he had agreed to.

Zimmerman's employer at the time, CarMax, agreed to garnish his wages. That arrangement was canceled in late 2008 because Zimmerman was no longer employed by CarMax.

According to the Seattle Times, Zimmerman found a variety of reasons to make calls to police while on neighborhood watch, including finding open garage doors in the neighborhood and repeatedly describing people he spotted as “suspicious.” He has acted aggressively towards other African Americans, according to one witness. As the Seattle Times noted:

“Teontae Ami, who also lives in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community, said very few black teens like himself live in the neighborhood.

Ami, 17, said he and a close friend who is black would sit at the end of a driveway in the evening and felt uncomfortable when Zimmerman would pass them on a neighborhood patrol. They used to greet him, but he never responded, he said.

‘I think he took his job too seriously,’ Ami said, referring to Zimmerman's watch patrols. A student, Ami said his friend was once confronted by Zimmerman, who accused him of stealing a bike.

Police recordings of the 911 calls, however, add a further disturbing element to this already sad story. Some listening to the tapes believe that they hear Zimmerman utter the phrase, “fucking coons.” (See http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/did-george-zimmerman-use-a-racial-slur/254925/ ). As Slate has noted, Zimmerman’s repeated 911 calls reveal a pattern: he apparently frequently found the actions of black people in his neighborhood suspicious. Slate reports:

“In August 2011, he called to report a black male in a tank top and shorts acting suspicious near the development's back entrance. ‘[Complainant] believes [subject] is involved in recent S-21s’—break-ins—‘in the neighborhood,’ the call log states. The suspect, Zimmerman told the dispatcher, fit a recent description given out by law enforcement officers.

Resolving whether Zimmerman is a racist or simply a volatile, dangerous person will not take place in the near future. A less complex issues is whether police actions reveal racial biases (they do) and whether the reaction of Fox News, its fans, and Glenn Beck and his Blaze website to this story is racist (it is.)

Right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin has made the standard, dumb “the racists are the people who point out racism” argument. The initial reaction of Fox was to ignore the story. As of noon on March 21, the Huffington Post reported, “the network had aired just one segment on the case, compared to 41 segments on CNN and 13 on MSNBC.”

Later, the network shifted to an uglier “blame the victim” approach. On March 23, Fox host Geraldo Rivera tweeted, "His hoodie killed Trayvon Martin as surely as George Zimmerman." Rivera was suggesting that many associate black men wearing hoodies with violent street gangsters. As others correctly pointed out, blaming Martin’s death on his clothing choice was like blaming rape victims for their assault if they wear short dresses. Associating black men and hoodies with crime is inherently racist. No one reaches for the gun when they see New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick or Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a hoodie.

Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, above, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, below, sport their hoodies. Perhaps if these guys got shot, Geraldo Rivera would have a point. I think the white skin gives them a shield of protection that Trayvon Martin lacked. It's not the hoodie. It's the racism, Geraldo. (Photos from http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=623202

CNN contributor Roland Martin makes a more important point. Whites have used African Americans as target practice long before the advent of the hoodie. "Hey Geraldo, Black kids have gotten shot not wearing hoodies. Dude, that's just dumb . . .”

Geraldo Rivera: that dude is "just dumb." (Photo from http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/geraldo_rivera_blames_trayvon_martins_death_on_his.php).

Meanwhile, President Obama made the most simple but eloquent comment yet on this horror story. Obama said:

“Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. When I think about this boy I think about my own kids and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.

I’m glad that not only the Justice Department is looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what is taking place.

I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened. That means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened as well as the specifics of the incident.

“What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful. It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.

Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him. That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Speaking of appalling, there's little surprise that Glenn Beck would jump into this chaos. Such a cowardly attack on a recently murdered African American youth, shot while walking peacefully in his father’s neighborhood carrying nothing more dangerous than a bag of Skittles and a glass of ice tea, is a run-of-the-mill smear for Beck. This carnival barker – a former “shock jock” who once made a harassing on-air phone call to the wife of a radio rival to make fun of her recent miscarriage (see http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909220037) – has built his shabby career by playing on the paranoid, apocalyptic fears of black and brown people of his frightened white audience. He is a racist demagogue of the type not seen in the American mainstream since the days of segregation.

Glenn Beck: A shabby career built on playing to the paranoid, apocalyptic fears of his racist audience. (Photo from http://hastingsnonviolence.blogspot.com/2011/07/glenn-beck-needs-shu.html).

While most of the world watched in horror as federal and state government incompetence allowed thousands of mostly black victims die following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Beck spat on the graves of the dead in his TV and radio broadcasts, deriding the victims as “scumbags.” On his radio show September 9, 2005 (in a diatribe in which he also said he hated the survivors of those slain in the 9-11 terrorist attacks) Beck delved into wildly inaccurate stereotypes of the black Katrina survivors housed in Houston’s Astrodome (where they were relocated because the Superdome in New Orleans had become unsafe.)

“Let me be real honest with you. I don't think anybody on talk radio -- I don't think anybody in their right mind is going to say this out loud -- but I wonder if I'm the only one that feels this way. Yesterday, when I saw the ATM cards being handed out, the $2,000 ATM cards, and they were being handed out at the Astrodome. And they actually had to close the Astrodome and seal it off for a while because there was a near-riot trying to get to these ATM cards . . . When you are rioting for these tickets, or these ATM cards . . . and this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this -- you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? . . . But the second thought I had when I saw these people and they had to shut down the Astrodome and lock it down, I thought: I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims.

These guys -- you know it's really sad. We're not hearing anything about Mississippi. We're not hearing anything about Alabama. We're hearing about the victims in New Orleans. This is a 90,000-square-mile disaster site, New Orleans is 181 square miles. A hundred and -- 0.2 percent of the disaster area is New Orleans! And that's all we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we're seeing on television are the scumbags -- and again, it's not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It's just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they're getting all the attention. It's exactly like the 9-11 victims' families. There's about 10 of them that are spoiling it for everybody.” (Listen at http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200509090003).

Needless to see, Beck’s depictionof Katrina survivors “rioting” for ATM cards is utterly false, as fabricated as his website’s accusation that Trayvon Martin may have been suspended from school for sexual assault. An honest account of what happened in the Astrodome can be found in Lemuel A. Moyé’s moving 2006 account Face to Face With Katrina Survivors; A First Responders Tribute.

On his April 27, 2006 radio broadcast, Beck characterized undocumented workers as terrorists or too criminal, lazy or stupid to make a living in their “dirtbag” country Mexico. As Beck ranted to his audience:

“How is it that I can be painted as somebody who is intolerant of people that are different than me? How is it that I can be painted as somebody who just hates Mexicans when the cornerstone of what my problem on illegal immigration is they're breaking the law and they're not alone in doing it. The people who are really breaking the law are the companies that are trying to get rich on the -- you know, let me ask you something. Somebody comes across the border in the middle of the night, why are they doing that? Really, three reasons: One, they're terrorists; two, they're escaping the law; or three, they're hungry. They can't make a living in their own dirtbag country. Well, how could I possibly want to hurt the people who are hungry, who want a better life? How can I possibly demonize those people? I can't. So, now I say, "Hey, we need these laborers over here. It helps them." No, it doesn't. What are the jobs Americans won't take? I'll tell you what those jobs are. Those are the jobs where you're picking tomatoes for below minimum wage, and you're working in conditions that are illegal for everybody else to work in. That's the jobs that Americans won't take, and we shouldn't give them to Mexicans. We shouldn't give those jobs to people who are coming here just because they're trying to put food on the table. That's obscene. Just so you can have a cheaper meal, just so I can have a cheaper box of strawberries? It's obscene. You wanna solve the immigration [problem]? You know it and I know it. You put up a giant fence. You stop the people who are coming here because they're criminals or they want to do us harm.” (See http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200604280003)

Mexico has a population of more than 113 million and Beck dismisses that sea of humanity as a “dirtbag country.” And he wonders why he “can be painted as somebody who is intolerant of people that are different” than him? Like any scoundrel, Beck loves wrapping himself in the flag and hiding behind the Bible as he spews his hate speech. Perhaps he ought to reflect on this verse, 1 John 3:10:

“By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

Or try Matthew 12:37:

“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

That Beck does not love his darker brothers is more than evident from his words. Beck not only spewed contempt for Mexicans, but Nigerians. In 2006, the always cash-strapped Nigerian government struggled with ways to prevent a threatened deadly outbreak of Avian flu. The government recorded radio jingles as one way to provide potentially life-saving information for the audience. This provoked nothing but derision from Beck on his Premiere Radio Network show. The host mocked the intelligence of Africa’s most populous nation. Beck said:

“By the way, there's another related bird-death story, this one coming out of Nigeria.

Nigeria is actually thinking that, you know, they need to come up with a way to educate people on how not get the bird flu. Well the only way you get the bird flu is if you're raising birds, and you're, like, touching, you know, chicken crap. You touch chicken crap, and you get the bird flu. Hello. I mean, how hard is that? They've actually resorted to radio jingles. And they are trying to teach -- I mean, are we this stupid? Are we as dumb as Nigeria? If it comes over here, do we have to have a stupid radio jingle to teach you how not to get the bird flu?” (See http://irvingblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/12/glenn-becks-new-show-will-air.html).

Beck hates more than other nations with dark-skinned people. Ironically for a man who habitually compares his political opponents to Nazis and Hitler, he actually repeatedly promoted the writings of 1930s Hitler-sympathizing, anti-Semitic author Elizabeth Dilling in radio and television broadcasts. As Media Matters for America revealed, “Dilling visited Germany in the late 1930s, and attended Nazi party meetings and praised Adolf Hitler's leadership. She also spoke at rallies hosted by U.S. Nazi organizations after the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, she leveled anti-Semitic attacks against several U.S. presidents, calling Dwight Eisenhower ‘Ike the Kike,’ attacking Richard Nixon for his ‘service to the synagogue,’ and calling John F. Kennedy's New Frontier program the ‘Jew frontier.’” When Dilling’s extensive record of anti-Semitism became public knowledge, Beck refused to apologize for praising her books. (See http://mediamatters.org/research/201008260006 and http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006070018).

Elizabeth Dilling was a Jew hater, Hitler admirer and her conspiracy-minded books are some of Glenn Beck's favorites. (Photo from http://www.google.com/imgres?q=Elizabeth+Dilling+photo&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&biw=1368&bih=631&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnso&tbnid=nGmm1ugY5e02SM:&imgrefurl=http://www.life.com/celebrity-pictures/50566351/elizabeth-dilling&docid=UzYv7ZoBZveBLM&imgurl=http://cache2.asset-cache.net/xc/50566351.jpg%253Fv%253D1%2526c%253DIWSAsset%2526k%253D2%2526d%253DE41C9FE5C4AA0A14ED8B68A5136BB21CEEA60CCED857CDAD77AB7D87CBDE2433B01E70F2B3269972&w=409&h=594&ei=_otuT6bVL6q42wXEi4jyAQ&zoom=1)

During his pervious incarnation as a Top-40 disc jockey in the 1990s, he specialized in crude ethnic impersonations, portraying Chinese Americans as being unable to pronounce “Rs,” once playing a gong when an Asian listener phoned in. As a shock jock, he laughed and joked when police fatally shot unarmed African American men. After the death of one black man shot by police in East Haven, Connecticut -- Malik Jones -- Beck went after the dead man’s family, ridiculing Jones’ mother as being on crack. (For more on the controversial Jones shooting, see http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/22/news/doc4cc106b10815f199528882.txt).

As Alexander Zaitchik writes on the Southern Poverty Law Center website:

“During his first talk radio stint in Tampa, he often referred to the Rev. Jesse Jackson as ‘the stinking king of the race lords.’ Most recently, Beck has worked to resuscitate the names of famously anti-civil rights figures from the history of his adopted Mormon faith. He has respectfully played tapes of Ezra Taft Benson, who thought Martin Luther King was a communist agent out to destroy the Mormon Church (and who once wrote the foreward to a book of race hate whose cover illustration featured the severed, bloody head of an African American). Beck has also implored his viewers to read the ‘divinely inspired’ books of W. Cleon Skousen, another John Birch Society fantasist who believed that the civil rights movement was part of a worldwide Communist (and, later, ‘New World Order’) conspiracy.” (See http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/08/24/the-sick-farce-of-glenn-becks-restoring-honor-rally/).

Beck’s book 2009 Arguing With Idiots: How To Stop Small Minds And Big Government, meanwhile is filled with racist cartoons of Mexicans wearing sombreros and thick moustaches. At one point, Chinese immigrants are represented visually by a drawing of a takeout food carton.

Illustrations from Glenn Beck's book Arguing With Idiots depict Mexicans as Frito Bandito archetypes and represent Chinese immigrants as a carton of takeout food. (Photos from http://mediamatters.org/research/201008260006).

Sigmund Freud famously described the pathology of “projection” – the process by which a guilt-wracked person attributes to others a trait they despise in themselves. For instance, a person with a large collection of “adult” magazines might become a stalwart anti-pornography crusader, a closeted gay man might become a stridently anti-homosexual politician, and so on. Like Rush Limbaugh and other right wing Republican racists in the media, Beck has obsessively accused Obama of being a reverse racist, once famously charging the president (who had a white mother and was raised for part of his childhood by white grandparents) with bearing animus towards white people. On the July 28, 2009 edition of Fox and Friends, Beck claimed:

"This president . . . has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." Beck added: "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist." (See http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907290012).

Beck always has plenty of tears for himself, but none for the families of black men shot by police. (Photo fromhttp://www.therightperspective.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Glenn_Beck_Crying.jpg).

Beck even attacked Obama for his name, suggesting that he was “un-American” for going by “Barack.” On the February 4, 2010 edition of his radio program, he said, “He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.” (See http://mediamatters.org/blog/201002040028).

Yes, Glenn, Obama was evil enough to go by the name his parents gave him, the name of his father. And George W. Bush shares the same name as King George II, the man who reigned over England in the late 18th Century and waged war with the Founding Fathers during the American Revolution. Guess Bush is anti-American too. What, exactly, is an “American” name anyway?

"The most effective way to become the slavemaster and make them come to you is to make them come to you for employment. How could you ever, if you're the president, lose your job if the voter understands that 'if I vote for the competitor who wants to reduce the size of government, that means my job goes away. I'll lose my job.' The real power grab is getting them into your employ." (To see this, watch the clip at http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201001110037).

Trivializing the hideous suffering of other groups is a favorite right-wing tactic, as is ludicrously exaggerating the hardships of the comfortable and affluent. Comparing taxes, or a health care plan, to slavery – especially if the hated policies come at the behest of an African American politician – relieves whites of the responsibility and the guilt of the real horrors of black slavery in this country’s past. Under this formulation, all Americans have suffered a form of slavery, therefore the continued historical consequences of bondage and white racism – black poverty, lower life-spans, higher disease rates, lack of access to high education, and higher levels of incarceration – deserve no special redress from Americans today. This tactic indirectly suggests that slavery wasn’t that bad and contemporary hardships suffered by the black community aren’t significant either. (Right-wingers also love trivializing the evils of Adolf Hitler by comparing Obama to the genocidal Nazi dictator and of comparing the nightmare of the Holocaust to health care reform.)

A typically callous and brainless Tea Party poster comparing President Obama's health care reform plan to the Holocaust. The picture shows a stack of bodies from a death camp. The caption reads: "National Socialist Health Care Dachau, Germany -- 1945." (Photo from http://www.themodernleft.com/2009/11/anti-health-care-protesters-sink-to-new.html).

If you're going to trivialize the evils of American slavery and the Nazi death camps, why not similarly trivialize the evil of Adolf Hitler by comparing him to a president with whom you don't agree? Hitler killed 10 million in concentration camps and started a war that slaughtered 30 million. Obama advocated health care reform. I can see the comparison. Beck compares his political enemies to Hitler constantly and so does this North Iowa Tea Party billboard that also sees parallels between the American president and the leader of the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin. (Photo from http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-07-14/news/27069949_1_tea-party-controversial-billboard-bad-decision).

Let’s have a reality check regarding slavery. Beck is too lazy and dishonest to do this, but he doesn’t have to go that far to find out how bad slavery was as compared to, say, dealing with government red tape or paying high taxes to the IRS.

To discover what slavery was really about, all he would have to do is consult the stories surviving slaves told to interviewers from the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. Under slavery, the master class had the absolute power of life and death over their chattel. Ben Simpson told a horror story about his childhood in slavery to a WPA interviewer not uncommon in antebellum Texas.

“Massa Earl Stielszen . . . got killed and my sister and I went to his son,” Simpson said. “His son was a killer. He got in trouble in Georgia and got him two good –stepping horses and the covered wagon. Then he chained all his slaves around the neck and fastened the chains to the horses and made them walk all the way to Texas. My mother and my sister had to walk. Emma was my sister. Somewhere on the road it went to snowing, and massa wouldn’t let us wrap anything round our feet. We had to sleep on the ground, too, in all that snow.

“Massa had a great long whip platted out of rawhide, and when one of the niggers fell behind or gave out, he hit them with that whip. It took the hide everytime he hit a nigger. Mother, she gave out on the way, about the line of Texas. Her feet got raw and bleeding, and her legs swelled plumb out of shape. Then massa, he just took out his gun and shot her, and whilst she lay dying he kicked her two, three times, and said, ‘Damn nigger that can’t stand nothing.’ Boss, you know that man, he wouldn’t bury mother, he just left her lying where he shot her at. You know, there wasn’t any law against killing nigger slaves.” (See Ben Simpson interview, Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography: Supplement, Series 2; Volume 9, Texas NarrativesPart 8 , 3,549-3,555.)

A slave wearing a heavy neck brace as a punishment. Physical and emotional cruelty was a regular part of the slave experience in America. (Photo from http://www.history.com/topics/slavery/photos#).

Afro-Texans suffered violence short of murder far more often. Nellie Hill, a former slave at the McNeese plantation at Gay Hill near the Central Texas town of La Grange, 100 miles northwest of Houston, recalled to interviewers in 1937 when her brother ran away after one beating.

“[Y]oung Marster John McNeese what I told you was de stepson, do de bossin’. He sure would get mean sometimes, an’ whip us mostly with peach tree switches. Mose, dat was my oldest brother, use to run away if Marster John whip too hard, an’ I ’members one time he run off and hid in the woods for three weeks. ’Course he slip up to the place at night an’ get somethin’ to eat, ‘cause mamma would put a big tin of food outside our quarters on a bench soon it get dark an’ in de mornin’ jes de tin plate was left.” (See Nellie Hill interview, Slave Narratives Collection (Collection number MSS 0154, Houston Metropolitan Resource Center).

Mose received a typical reception when he finally returned to the plantation. “He comes back ’bout three weeks after he runs off, an’ young Marster John come to our place an’ see him, an’ grabs him an’ ties his hands nan’ feet an’ den drags him to a tree an’ ties him up,” Hill remembered. “Den’ he comes back and makes me light a candle an’ makes my brother James get a tub to hold in front of de candle so de wind don’t blow it out, an’ he gets a buggy whip an’ we goes back to de tree whar Mose is tied up. I holds de candle so Marster John can see, an he takes de shirt offen Mose, an’ starts in to lashin’s him. Law me, he cuts his back to pieces, but we don’ dare say nothin’, cause he’d lashed us he was so mad. Um- Um -- when I ’members dat night, I gets de shivers yet.” (See the Nellie Hill interview.)

African American slaves in Texas sometimes suffered dismemberment for even learning how to read and write. “Squire Garner bought a man dat had his right fore finger tore off,” Mollie Watson told a WPA interviewer. “He say he learned to write an’ when his master found out he had his finger cut off.” (Mollie Watson interview, Rawick, ed., The American Slave: Supplement, Series 2;Volume 12, Oklahoma Narratives, 371.)

Like Glenn Beck, the radio host's privileged white fans like to imagine that they somehow are the modern-day equivalent of real slaves from the 19th century who suffering crippling beatings, poor nutrition and were often sold apart from loved ones. In this perverse reckoning, middle class whites are the "slaves" and the nation's first African American president is a "slavemaster." (Photos from http://likeawhisper.wordpress.com/anti-obama-protest-signs/ ).

I could devote hundreds of thousands of words to describe the atrocities African American slaves experienced, but that would wander from the main point of this post. Glenn Beck is an amoral sociopath to even dare comparing slavery to health care reform or excessive regulation.

Related to this perverse obsession with slavery, Beck (as well as Rush Limbaugh) also likes to describe every Obama policy initiative from health care to the 2009 stimulus package as “reparations.” The term comes from the dream some African Americans have that the U.S. government one day might financially compensate the black community for 200-plus years of unpaid labor as slaves (just as the government compensated the Japanese victims of internment camps in the U.S. during World War II.

Beck and Limbaugh didn’t mention reparations when a white president, George W. Bush, created a prescription drug benefit for seniors. As opposed as he was to Bill Clinton’s health reform efforts in 1993, Limbaugh never characterized this policy as “reparations” either. This is specifically a racist attack aimed at discrediting any domestic policy proposed by a black president not on the merits of the president’s plan, but on his racial identity.

On his July 23, 2009 radio broadcast, Beck said, “Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill, are transforming America. And they are all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: reparations. ... These massive programs are Obama brand reparations -- or in presidential speak, leveling out the playing field. But, just in case the universalness of the program doesn't somehow or another quench his reparation appetite, he is making sure to do his part to pay the debt in the other areas." Beck, ignoring that most of the beneficiaries of programs like the health care reform bill would be non-white, went on to accuse the president of wanting to “settle old racial scores.” (See http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907230040).

The score settling, and the deep-seated racism, has mostly been right-wingers and ruthless liars like Beck. I write this blog as a resource for progressives, to provide them one-stop shopping for information when their conservative friends deny the depth and width of racism within the modern Republican Party. The mendacity of dopes like Beck must be documented and confronted. I realize, however, that the right has become too dishonest to confront its sins.

However, I defy even the most hard-core right-wingers to deny the sheer naked, atavistic intolerance of Beck’s comments about Obama on August 5, 2010, when he compared Barack Obama’s America to Planet of the Apes. “What planet have I landed on? Did I slip through a wormhole in the middle of the night and this looks like America? It's like the damn Planet of the Apes. Nothing makes sense!” Beck said.

Glenn Beck actually said that America under Barack Obama is like "the Planet of the Apes." Do I really need to explain why that's racist? (Photo from http://www.beyondhollywood.com/category/conquest-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-remake-movie/page/2/).

Actually, Glenn, sadly it all makes sense. Millions of Americans are broke, out of work, and looking for simple answers. Haters like Beck tell their gullible listeners to blame blacks, Latinos, Jews, gays and progressives rather than the rich and the powerful. Attacking the marginal takes no courage. A revolution against entrenched elites like the Koch Brothers, on the other hand, takes both guts and brains, commodities Beck and his legion of dolts have in pathetically short supply.

It goes without saying, that Obama was not making the Martin case a racial issue. He was relating to the young shooting victim in a personal way, as a human being. Racists like Gingrich, Beck, Hannity, and the core Fox audience have spent their whole lives denying the humanity of those with dark skin. To the Gngriches, Becks and Hannitys, black people like Martin are not be mourned but are political props to be cynically exploited to win the support of the ignorant and fearful. Goddamn them all.

“The
Current is Stronger’: Images of Racial Oppression and Resistance in North Texas
Black Art During the 1920s and 1930s ” in Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D.
Wintz, eds., The Harlem Renaissance in the West: The New Negroes’ Western
Experience (New York:
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011)

“Dallas,
1989-2011,” in Richardson Dilworth, ed. Cities in American Political History (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011)

(With
John Anthony Moretta and Keith J. Volanto), Keith J. Volonto and Michael
Phillips, eds., The American Challenge: A New History of the United States, Volume II. (Wheaton, Il.: Abigail Press,
2012).

“Texan by
Color: The Racialization of the Lone Star State,” in David Cullen and Kyle
Wilkison, eds., The Radical Origins of the Texas Right (College Station: University of Texas
Press, 2013).

He
is currently collaborating, with longtime journalist Betsy Friauf, on a history
of African American culture, politics and black intellectuals in the Lone Star
State called God Carved in Night: Black Intellectuals in Texas and the World
They Made.

Followers

About Me

I received my Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin. My first book, "White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001," won the Texas State Historical Commission's T.R. Fehrenbach Award for best work on Texas history in 2007. My second book, "The House Will Come to Order: How the Texas Speaker Became a Power in State and National Politics" will be published by the University of Texas Press March 1, 2010.
My beautiful boy Dominic was born on May 30, 2003. He's an avid reader and loves Harry Potter and Star Wars.
I am a frustrated political liberal, holding Democrats in contempt but too suspicious about the competence of the Green Party to make the leap.
I am married to a wonderful woman named Betsy Friauf who was my editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram 20 years ago. We will be writing books together.
My only appointment television is "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." I also love to cook when I have the time.